


Roll Up Your Sleeves

by levendis



Series: Prompt Fics [106]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Adulthood, Domestic Fluff, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-09-28 05:55:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10075238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levendis/pseuds/levendis
Summary: They're gonna make it on their own.





	

**Author's Note:**

> for resting-meme-face/ferndavant, who vaguely requested 10/Rose

They have a house here, in the parallel universe. Small but homey, an untended garden in front. Weeds growing between the bricks in the walkway, cracks in the concrete steps. Yellow trim, nice curtains in the windows. A kettle on the counter and milk in the fridge.

“Don’t think about it too hard,” he says, stepping over the threshold.

About where this came from, the how and the why. Rose had, in fact, been thinking very hard about it. She sets her rucksack down on the linoleum and watches the way the late-afternoon sun filters through the windows. She breathes in, feeling like the air ought to smell familiar.

“It’s real. I’m real. It’ll be okay.” He reaches out tentatively, his hand light on her upper arm.

It is, he is, it will be. She smiles, and turns towards him, and embraces him, feeling him shake just slightly as she wraps her arms around him.

 

 

* * *

“Bills,” John announces. Rose is calling him John now, they both are. “And lots of them.” He deposits an armful of envelopes next to his abandoned bowl of Weetabix, and then deposits himself into the chair.

She’d bought him more outfits but he’s still in the suit and tie. Old habits.

“Those tend to happen,” she says. She shovels the last of her egg-n-toast breakfast into her mouth, goes to rinse the plate off and slide it neatly into the dishwasher.

“It’s terrible.”

“I know.” She pats her mouth with her napkin and leans down to kiss him.

“And you’re going to work at the shop so you can pay all those bills,” he recites dutifully.

“That’s how it goes, yeah.” She smiles, kisses him again and she gathers her things - lipstick and moisturizer and spare cash and so on carefully situated inside her purse - and she tries not to think too hard about how he hadn’t smiled back.

 

 

* * *

“Shopgirl, huh,” John says. He brushes her hair away from her eyes, his other hand flat and still between her breasts.

“And a great one.” She rolls closer to him, her face buried in his armpit. Breathing in deep, reminding herself that his smell is familiar, that she knows him.

“Doesn’t it get boring?”

“As fuck, yes, but it’s all I know how to do. That and fast food, and I refuse to smell like chips and grease all the time.” She pats his hand, the one on her chest. “I’m gonna go take a shower. You can join me, if you want.”

He doesn’t join her, but that’s fine. Shower sex is hugely overrated.

 

 

* * *

“The eggs?”

“Are fantastic,” she says. Truthfully, the eggs are marginal, but he’d bothered to make them and she figures his ego is owed a stroke. “Have you thought about what we were discussing?”

“Me getting a job.” He hunches over, arms around a bottle of milk, a box of Weetabix, and an empty bowl. Yesterday’s cereal is still in the sink, turned to cement.

“Only so many times you can upgrade the TV.”

“And you?”

“Not qualified for anything else,” she says. She pats his hand, curled around the floral-patterned cereal bowl. “But you! You could be a professor, or a rocket scientist, or whatever.”

“Bit difficult to come up with references.”

“Just lie, no one ever checks. And you’re smart, right? I mean you’re not - you’re human now, but you’re still very clever. Anywhere’d be lucky to have you.” She stands up, and leans down to kiss him, then goes to slide her plate next to the bowl in the sink. She watches the light filter through the windows, past the curtains and onto the floor.

 

 

* * *

“I’m scared,” he says. He’s curled up in front of her, the little spoon. She can’t see his face and that’s probably for the best.

“I know,” she whispers, mouth against the skin of his neck.

“I dunno how to do this.”

She can feel him shaking, narrow shoulders trembling against her. “You’ll figure it out.”

“I feel like running. All the time. Not from you, but just…”

“Just running, yeah. Welcome to the human race.” She finds one of his hands, clenched into a fist by his rib cage, and she eases his fingers straight, weaves hers around them.

“So this is what happens, then.”

“Getting a job and paying the bills and doing the dishes? It’s the best-case scenario, yeah.”

“All day, all the days in a row.”

“Until you die.” She squeezes his hand. “Regret it? Being, um, you-before leaving you-now here with me. Being here, with me.”

“Nah. Pros outweigh the cons.” He presses back against her, not sexual, just - or so she imagines - a comfort thing. Skin against skin, the warmth of it. “Do I really need to get a job?”

“You really kinda do, yeah.”

He nuzzles his head under her chin. “I could be a shopgirl. Like you.”

She stifles a laugh, pressed a kiss to the top of his hair. “Yeah. You’d be a good shopgirl.”

“I’ll go stumping for gigs in the morning.”

“Yeah. In the morning. G'night, John.”

“Na-night.”

She holds him as he fell asleep, his limbs going loose, then she lets herself follow.


End file.
